All you can do is try to know who your friends are

[lists_to_port]

Who: Open to noprevaricating CR and anyone involved in the House 7 Player Plot (and their CR? I dunno. I like to involve people.)
When: June 8 (the day after this gruesome discovery.) Any time.
Where: Various places around the village
Summary: erythrophilia decided to take out her fury at lists_to_port on one of his friends--an act of misplaced anger that she later seemed to regret. folkloristic is

Comments

[slaying]

Sometime after this reached its end, Buffy Summers hurried back to House Seven. She knew she should not have left it so impulsively and yet -- Grell had spent the past little while with her, right? Practically an act of protection all on its own. This is how she decided to spin it to herself as she unlocked the front door and...empty. Everyone was missing. Of course they were missing. Bones had been called to help and a quick check back over the journals suggested to her that Jilly had gone along. Good. She needn't worry over that, then.

Dawn. She had to check on Dawn. But she had told the girl to stay put and goddammit she trusted her. She shouldn't have trusted her. But the younger Summers would've realized that this was a chips-are-down situation, right? Buffy tossed aside her jacket. The sun was coming up.

To know the future of his soul. God damn, Jack! Buffy shoved a side-table hard and rough and it flew across the room, crashing against the opposite wall. Leaving kindling on the floor below. But -- these were roads she had traveled before. The Big Bad sometimes told the truth and sometimes fabricated and sometimes did both the manipulate the players involved. Angelus in Glory's dress size. That's what she had said to Dawn. The comparison sickened her, now. And not simply because of the ick-factor.

The Slayer wasn't allowing herself to imagine Archie's condition. She needed to think a few more steps ahead of that. Let the others fall to aid and nursemaiding. That kind of bleeding heart was necessary for them but impractical for her. No time. No time like there had been no time to stop long at Xander's bedside in the wake of his lost eye. She had delivered the information she had needed to deliver and had left. Back to the fight. Back to fixing things.

Buffy grabbed her scythe from beside her bed and set about her day.

(ooc; for anyone who would like to have some reacty time with buffy, she'll be doing such things as 1) patrolling rather generally, 2) seeking out jack sparrow in all of their usual co-haunts, 3) stopping by dawn's to check in on her as promised or 4) finally stopping by the battledome's clinic to speak with archie's vigil-keepers and to check in on the navy boy herself. )

treehouse---evening of June 8

[lists_to_port]

It had finally come down to this. The treehouse was meant to be there for them in the wake of excruciating experiments and confusion and peril. Right now, Jack was doing a pretty good job of scoring a series of marks into a floorboard with the tip of his dagger. He hated feeling guilt, and right now it was hitting him from several directions at once.

Jilly, unprotected. Buffy? As good as betrayed, considering what he and Dawn had done together. Kennedy lying all dead-like in the clinic. Hornblower gutted. The former Watcher being civil.

He dug the blade deeper, finally giving up and driving it deep into the wood, point first. The hilt swayed slightly and was still.

[slaying]

The treehouse. She had avoided it all day in favour of looking for other places to run into the pirate. But after the sun had set and she had assured herself that the loose ends were at least temporarily tied up, Buffy set out for the place where things were supposed to get better. But it hardly felt like that could be possible.

She climbed slowly. Taking her time, thinking to herself. Preparing to be disappointed when she pulled herself over the threshold and found no one waiting for her.

[lists_to_port]

"Hallo, Annie." He leaned back so that his spine was flush against the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest. "Kennedy any better?"

[slaying]

"He's got the best care anyone in this place could ask for," Buffy acknowledged the question without providing much of an answer. The truth was that she didn't really know. Clinics of any kind were not her preferred scene and Archie had enough bedside sitters as it was. What could she do beyond what she was already doing?

Once inside, Buffy stood. Her scythe was missing tonight but there was a wicked looking knife jammed between her belt and the top of her jeans.

[lists_to_port]

By the way, I've been teaching your Dawn---your most precious thing---to shoot a gun. Guns, by the way, being one of your most hated things. Shall I just jump out the window now or wait for you to push me?

"That's quite a knife you've got there. Hunting?"

[slaying]

"Always," she replied. Cagily. She wasn't sure whether Jack had been around Archie's apartment or the dome's clinic since things had gone down but she knew that if he had been -- and had noted her absence -- it wouldn't be tough to put the pieces together.

Though she hadn't worn the knife to her little business meeting. She had, in fact, gone entirely unarmed.

[lists_to_port]

"You'd better be careful, slayer. She's not like your vampires. She's far worse."

He shifted uneasily; he wondered whether Buffy could sniff out secrets, or read a man's heart. Witchcraft.

[slaying]

"...Then it's a good thing I'm used to butting heads with things worse than vampires."

She rested her palm on the handle of that knife. She was far too embroiled in her own guilty conscience to suspect anything of Jack's.

[lists_to_port]

"I failed her. I failed him. I failed them both." Sparrow slumped. "My plans always work, Buffy. Always. Somehow---even if they don't work right away, they get there in the end. Not so this time."

[slaying]

They were the two saddest souls in Luceti, tonight. Buffy was already taking her lion's share of the blame. Mostly due to her delay and inability to step up when she should have. She saw, now, that an inordinate fondness for the pirate had brought her to accept a plan that she shouldn't have accepted. To hold back when she should have strode forward. Even Giles had told her it was too little too late.

She paced. Just a few steps at a time. "It's not the end yet, Jack." It was meant to be supportive -- he had, after all, said they get there in the end. And she only wanted to imply that there was till an end to get to. But it only came out sour. Uncertain except that they knew much worse could still be waiting for them.

[lists_to_port]

"It won't be until she has me." Flat. Truth.

[slaying]

"...I'm not so sure about that." Flatter. Truth.

[lists_to_port]

"....What?" Flattest. Query.

[slaying]

She turned away from him, then. These words would be important words. Vital words. And she wasn't sure how to deliver them without feeling the filthy, filthy lie-through-omission.

"Scores change, Jack." Buffy thumbed the handle of the knife. Dreading everything. "And you have to stop taunting her."

[lists_to_port]

The pirate pulled his own blade out of the floor, angry. She'd gone and confronted the god, then---just as he knew she would, eventually. Was his anger justified? It was Buffy. Buffy was strong. She could look after herself.

Except any thought of what that god might do to her renewed that anger. He forced himself to swallow it.

"Do I. She told you this? You fought her?"